PROLOGUE—PART ONE

Generally speaking, people are boring. Perhaps not internally, not in their quiet, private moments where they admit to the darkest desires of their secret hearts. But in their day-to-day living, they can be relied upon to be tedious automatons, falling into routines that lead them down the same streets, into the same coffee shops, to the same elevators and into the same offices, day after grueling, monotonous day.

That, of course, is what makes my job possible.

I become a part of their routine, a silent, unseen part, and I familiarize myself with their movements so that I can anticipate where they will be, and when, down to the minute. Oh, sure, there are the occasional moments of spontaneity: A road closed due to construction, necessitating a detour; forgetting the milk—again—at the grocery store, because you use half-and-half, only your wife uses skim; having to stay late at the office to accommodate a conference call on the other side of the world. But you’d be surprised how infrequently things like these arise, how they tend to cluster together, whether by capricious chance or your own self-fulfilling prophecy. Most days are just like the ones that came before. And me? I watch.

I watch so that when you leave the office just a bit later than everyone else, I am there to cut the power to the elevators; I watch so that when you are forced to take the stairs from the 32nd floor, I am waiting for you between the 12th and the 14th. I watch so that I know your building well enough to know where there are security cameras, and where there are none. And as we pass one another on the staircase, I know you so well that I can predict you will turn slightly toward me to give me a wide berth and mutter, “Excuse me,” with your head bent, focusing on the concrete beneath your feet. And that is all the time I will need to reach out with my dagger and slit your throat.

I may as well be a shadow, a specter even, for all of the evidence I leave behind. My training has made me meticulous to a fault, and my ego isn’t so inflated that I have ever become cocky or overconfident in my abilities. I am simply a woman who knows how to make herself seen, or unseen, as suits her purpose.

I don’t revel in what I do: it is a serious business, the snuffing out of human life. Nor do I carry a burden of guilt so heavy that it makes me unequal to the task. Perhaps this makes me a sort of monster—I just call it “getting through the day”.